Joe Johnston, Art Director of Special Effects on THE EMPIRES STRIKES BACK, and his assistant, Nilo Rodis-Jamero, are the artists responsible for the sketches in this book.

Johnston was originally hired by Lucasfilm in 1975 to be storyboard artist for STAR WARS. Once those storyboards were developed, Johnston was asked to sketch the various spacecraft appearing in the climatic Death Star battle scene. Many of these imaginative and detailed sketches, which were used as blueprint guides by the model makers, may be found in THE STAR WARS SKETCHBOOK (Ballantine Books, 1977).

For THE EMPIRES STRIKES BACK, the sequel to STAR WARS, Johnston’s creative role was expanded to include not only the storyboard designs, but also scene layouts, shots designs and compositions, miniature designs, and all special effect sequences as they related to the film.

Again, his designs were used as guides to the model makers after first being approved by George Lucas. Guided by the principle that modifying the drawings would be easy than altering a model, Johnston and Lucas met frequently to work out the concepts for the new EMPIRE characters and vehicles before the models were built. These new concepts included the snow walker, Reberl Cruiser, snowspeeder, Yoda, and Boba Fett.

Collaborating with Johnston on the realization of some of these designs, Nilo Rodis-Jamero assisted in developing many of the concepts for the spacecraft and other vehicles. In addition, Rodis-Jamero drew half of the storyboards, assisted in modifying vehicle designs, helped build the prototype snow walker model, and was responsible for the design, construction and coordination of the miniature sets for THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. This meant that he was required to design sets that completely matched the location sets where the live-action shots were filmed.

Joe Johnston was raised in Texas and, when his family moved to Los Angeles, attended California State College in Long Beach where he majored in Industrial Design. He is now a resident of San Anselmo, California.

Nilo Rodis-Jamero studied Industrial Design at San José State College. After several years working as a designer of cars, boats, industrial vehicles and military tanks, Rodis-Jamero joined Lucasfilm in the summer of 1978.